For book worms Are apps gaming the joy of reading?

EVERY YEAR, LIKE many readers, I set myself a reading goal. Users of apps like Goodreads or StoryGraph will know exactly what I’m talking about: you enter the number of books you intend to read that year and, as you track your reading throughout the year, the app will tell you how close you are to your target.

It’s a fun way to see your progress and to see your friends’ progress, for these apps also allow you to see other people’s reading goals and how well they’re doing.

This year, I set myself a goal of reading 50 books, a nice round number. A book a week with a two-week grace period. That should be doable, right? But, is there a cost?

I often wonder how (or if) these reading goals impact how we read or the reading choices that we make. If we are constantly looking to the number of books we have read or, more likely, the number we have yet to read — my app tells me that I have read 37 books so far, that I am ahead by 16 books, and that I have reached 73% of my target – are we being influenced as to what to read next?

Gaming books 

While it tells me the quantity of books that I’ve read, it says nothing about the quality. (For what it’s worth, I have read books by Orwell, Shakespeare, Hilary Mantel, Julian Barnes, Graham Greene and John Le Carré. I read The Colour Purple by Alice Walker and Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein. I read a book about cryptocurrencies and a prize-winning novel about a toxic mother/daughter relationship. I have also read some terrific science fiction and horror novels. I read widely and try not to discriminate.)

But how many of these books have I actually absorbed? If I’m reading with one eye on the number and another towards the next book, then am I truly sitting with these books and giving them the time and attention that they deserve? The honest answer is probably not. If I didn’t have the app in front of me, I would be hard-pressed to tell you the last five books I read. Also, if I fail to reach my goal of 50 books, does that mean I’m a failure? 50 books is a lot, hell, 30 books is a lot. Maybe even 10 is a lot. A book a month? My point is that the amount we read very much depends on our personal circumstances, and no one should feel bad if they don’t achieve their goal or if they read less than others. Everyone is different. You do you.

The use of these apps also poses other questions: Am I more likely to read longer books at the start of the year and shorter ones towards the end of the year as I try to reach my goal? Am I more likely to eschew longer novels in favour of shorter ones altogether? Am I less likely to read a Ulysses or a War and Peace, or a Jilly Cooper, because of their prohibitive lengths? Whether we realise it or not, I suspect that these apps influence what books we read almost as much as how many books we read.

Slow reading

Slow reading, sometimes called deep reading, evolved from the slow movement, itself an initiative that calls for a deceleration in the pace of modern life. It prioritises quality over quantity. This can extend to many areas of life: food, art, cinema, fashion. It also applies to books. Books are worth sitting with and investing time in. This can be hard to do, such is the pace of modern life and how we are constantly being bombarded with news and information. We read headlines and are expected to have an instant opinion about things. We are served a diet of clickbait and social media fodder and push notifications. There are so many things vying for our attention and yet carving out time to sit with a book is one of the greatest gifts that you can give yourself.

I have a routine. On days when I’m not commuting to work, I get up early – usually 5:00 am (yes, I am insane) – make a pot of coffee, curl up on the couch and read. I love this time of day. It is a quiet time, before the world wakes up and beckons me to attend its everyday whims and fancies. It is the perfect time to sit with a book and contemplate what the author is trying to share with the reader. The relationship between author and reader is a very personal and intimate one.

And yet, despite the ways in which technology can distract us from reading, it has also played a part in how we read — e-readers, audiobooks, phones, etc. — and, indeed, in how we talk about books — BookTube, BookTok and Bookstagram.

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My personal preference will always be for physical books, but I love my e-reader for its compactness and that I have hundreds of books at my fingertips that can fit easily into my bag. One of my favourite ways to read is to listen to an audiobook while reading along with the text. It allows me to focus on the text and it stops my mind from wandering. It might sound like an odd thing to do, but it works wonderfully with more challenging books. It’s how I’m going to read Ulysses – a book I have started many times but never finished. Thanks to the Ulysses80 initiative on BlueSky, I have set myself a challenge to read Joyce’s masterpiece in 80 days.

So this summer, I plan to read consistently. I am going to this while listening to RTÉ’s wonderful performance of the novel — available for free on Apple Podcasts (and, no doubt, other podcast apps).

So, maybe that should be my goal. I’m going to read one book this year — Ulysses — and if I read another 49 on top of that, great. But if I don’t? So what? I think it’s time to stop tracking the number of books I read and just enjoy what I read.

Aoife Martin is an IT professional and writer.